The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Erotica

The Erotica Writer’s Husband ^{Jennifer D. Munro}

The erotica writer’s husband bangs open the front door and stomps outside. Barefoot, with his fly half open, he’d interrupted his current activity when he heard barks and feline screeches.

His wife’s cat, puffed up to dramatic size, hisses from the safety of the yellow window box. Marigolds splash against bristling black fur. Fastening the buttons of his 501s, the sex author’s spouse scans the yard for the offending dog, but the husband’s eyes meet the neighbor’s, instead.

“Sorry!” The neighbor snaps a leash onto the collar of his now slash-nosed and cowering mutt. He notes the open-flied jeans of the erotica writer’s husband. “Oh hoh, your wife must be home. I bet you spend a lot of time with your pants down, being married to a porn writer and all. Doing research.”

“Uh-huh. Well. Gotta get back. She’s waiting.”

“Don’t let me keep you!”

The sex author’s spouse waves and carries the angry cat inside. The cat rakes his wrist in one final protest and leaps free. But instead of returning to the slick and sprawled wife his neighbor imagines, pen tucked behind her ear to take notes as she commands him to enact tawdry scenarios, he returns to the john to finish his interrupted piss.

His buddies and neighbours, jealous of a man married to a scribbler of lewd tales, imagine his rampant and orgiastic sex life. His wife is obsessed with sex manuals and adult websites, they think, not home decor catalogues like theirs.

In fact, as husband to a smutty authoress, he suspects that he’s getting less than they are. He doesn’t know whether to dissuade them from their faulty beliefs in order to gain their sympathy or to continue to bask in the glow of their misplaced admiration. After all, they think he’d been stud muffin enough to capture a lusty wench in matrimony, whereas they had landed frumpy fraus more interested in dozing than dildos. There were worse things a guy’s friends could assume. They’d given him unsolicited and unearned respect, rarely seen by a monogamous, suburban man with no aptitude for sports. How empty would their lives be if they no longer had his prowess to worship? Who was he to disappoint them by correcting their misapprehension?

As he contemplates the remote control or a nap, the erotica writer herself cracks open her study door. Her laser printer huffs in the background, expending more energy over sex than husband and wife have in the past month. “Everything OK?” she asks.

“Just Dufus Rufus chasing Frizbeehead again. She scratched me.” He holds out his clawed arm.

“Better sterilize that. Antiseptic’s in the bathroom cabinet. Oh, mind doing the dishes? I’ve got this deadline.”

“Sure, hon. Listen, can we talk, I—”

“Damn, now I’ve forgotten that perfect word. Shit, I spent the last half hour with a Thesaurus and now… stupid dog. Somebody needs to put him out of our misery.” She scoops the cat up and closes the door.

He wishes she would spend a half-hour with her finger in something other than a book.

That evening he suggests that they might spend some time together, since it’s the weekend, but she encourages him to go watch the game with his pals. “Go out and have some fun. Becky’s giving me her feedback on that story I’ve been working on.”

“The slaves in the ice castle one? In Greenland?”

“Not Greenland. A hidden fjord in Svalbard. No, I couldn’t figure out how the characters could stay warm enough to be turned on. I got cold just thinking about it. Now they’re on a boat. Only the Master goes ashore, but that gives the favourite slave time to secretly practise his violin. But of course someone hears him playing the Paganini Caprice No. 24 and finds him, and then he has to decide whether he wants to stay willingly.”

“Still working the gay market? I thought you’d had it with all that spunk.” He knows better than anyone that both the dentist and doctor have documented her strong gag reflex, which precludes certain bedroom activities.

“Pays better, and you said yourself the truck transmission’s about to go. Anyway, the slave’s going to have a guiche, so I need to do some research before Becky gets here.”

“I know how to make quiche.”

“A guiche. Not quiche. A piercing down there.”

“Ouch.”

“Then I’m hitting the hay early so I can get up to do my edits. Mind sleeping on the couch when you get home so you don’t wake me up?”

“How about we roll in the hay instead of hitting it?”

“Funny man. I married you for your sense of humour.”

He receives an ovation when he arrives at the bar. His friends clear a stool for him.

“Have a beer!” Dean cries. “You must be exhausted!”

“Drink up!” Doug says. “Replenish those fluids!”

“Do a shot, man,” Dave advises. “You can’t spare the time for a pint! Gotta get back to the little wife!”

They check their watches. “How long you need to regenerate, man? We’ll let you know when time’s up.”

His cell phone rings. “It’s my wife. I better pick up.”

“Time for dessert!” they all jeer. “Second helpings!”

“Mind picking up some buttermilk on your way home?” his wife asks. “I’m making bread tomorrow.”

“Sure, hon.” He wishes she would knead something other than flour. The only thing rising in his house is dough. They could milk his meat instead. Beat his eggs. Eat her jelly roll. Toss his nuts. Warm her bread basket. Hot cross his buns. Maybe make baby batter and put a bun in the oven.

“So, what’d she want? Come on, you can tell us.”

“Lovin’ in her oven.”

They whoop and slap him on the back. His Hefeweizen splashes his shirt.

“Come on, spill the beans, man. You never tell us anything.”

He swipes at his soggy shirt, imagining:

He bangs the front door open and stomps inside, adjusting his wide load. His wife pauses with her lipstick-stained teacup halfway to her lips. “You’re home early, honey,” she says tremulously from her jasmine steam cloud.

“Jig’s up,” he growls. “Be my whore, or I’ll divulge your pen name to the neighbours.”

Her hand goes up to the red-rimmed “O” of her lips. She sets down the cup in its saucer with a small clink and drops to her knees. “Of course, whatever you want, honey.” She lifts her Save the Manatees sweatshirt to reveal a red lace teddy with nipple cutouts.

“Hello?” Dean snaps in his ear. “Yo, dick brain?”

“Earth to Stud Man,” Doug says. “You gonna give us some dirt, or what?”

“Yeah, your mind’s definitely in the gutter.” Dave orders another round. “Should’ve seen the look on your face.”

“Well, you know, it’s private. Husband and wife.”

“Yeah, and the thirty thousand people who read her stories!”

He can’t blame his wife for his current status as a begrudging icon of virility. She would have kept her kinky stories a secret, but he blurted out the news to the world when the Penthouse check arrived. He hadn’t considered the ramifications. Well, maybe he had, just a little. He was not without pride at his own magnanimity in allowing her to be who she was. That he didn’t hold his wife’s rampant public perversions in check, but allowed them to march unfettered across magazine racks far and wide, was a testament to his part in Steinem’s new race of unthreatened Man. What other husband would be so secure in his manhood that he would be permissive – nay, encouraging – of his wife’s transgressive acts, particularly when they did not involve his own penis? Involved a whole parade of phantom penises, in point of fact.

Ironically, from what he’s heard, his neighbourhood has an above average times-per-week compared to most suburban outposts, owing to the fervour of imagination the erotica writer and her husband inspire.

Does he want them to know the truth, or does he want to continue to stand tall among them as the man who is getting the most nookie? The rare beast who has to keep up with his wife’s ravenous appetite? The stallion who snagged a nymphomaniac? The man who has the pleasure of acting out every filthy scenario she devises? He has more sexual intrigue than the guys on covers of romance novels. He’s not mowing the lawn like the rest of these poor schmucks; he’s munching her bush.

“It’s fiction,” he finally ventures to his bar mates in response. “You don’t have to commit murder to write a mystery.”

They snort and pump their hips suggestively. A woman down the bar looks at them in disgust and carries her Pinot Grigio to a distant table.

Dean notes his scratched wrists. “Whoa! She got a little carried away, huh?”

“So what is the little lady up to tonight?” Doug asks.

“She’s got a friend coming over.”

“You dog!” Dave wipes his beer moustache. “A threesome!”

He bangs the front door open and stomps inside. His wife and her friend pause with their lipstick-stained teacups halfway to their lips. “Jig’s up,” he growls. “Be my sluts, or I’ll delete your American Idols off the TiVo.”

Her hand goes up to the red-rimmed “O” of her lips. She sets down the cup in its saucer with a small clink and drops to her knees. “Of course, whatever you want, honey. You, too, right, Becky?” His wife lifts her orange knit poncho to reveal a black leather teddy with nipple cutouts. But Becky, being small, quick, and lithe, has already crawled halfway across the floor, on a mission to get his cock into her mouth before his wife can. Her breasts fall out of her cardigan as she makes like a Slinky towards him. “I’ve been hungry for you to ask me! All of my sinful stories are just flimsy cover-ups for the real fantasies I’m having about you! Come to Mama, my divine sausage, and gimme the works.”

“It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”

When he leaves a while later, whistles and catcalls follow him out the door into the rainy night.

He pulls into the driveway of 613 Cedar Lane and surveys the dark house. He takes his shoes off on the front porch and carries them inside, careful in his socked feet to make no noise on the wood floor. She’s a light sleeper, and the smallest creak that jars her from REM will disrupt her circadian rhythm for weeks.

He hears a small voice calling to him, and he cracks open the bedroom door. His wife sits propped up in the bed, in a dim circle of light from her bed lamp, sudoku book and pencil in hand. A teacup and saucer perch on the comforter beside her.

“Glad you’re home.” She yawns. “You saved me from myself. I was about to cheat. How pathetic.”

“What’re you doing still up? Thought you had to get back to work at the crack of dawn.”

“Couldn’t sleep. Missed you.” She pats the bed beside her.

“Hold on a sec.” He holds up the buttermilk. “Lemme put this away first.”

“Nuke this for me while you’re up?” She holds out the teacup.

He punches in twenty-two seconds on the microwave. There’s not a lot he feels he can do for her, other than the occasional oil change or too-tight jar lid. But if she’s comfy on the couch and in the middle of a book, she can, without a word, hold out her half-finished tea to him on his way past. He’s got it down to a science and punches in numbers on the timer depending on how empty the cup is. She likes her tea hot, but not too hot.

He hands her the warmed cup and stretches out beside her. She wrinkles her nose while she sips.

“Too hot?” Impossible.

“No. It’s just that it’s chamomile.”

“I thought you hated chamomile.”

“I do. It’s so horsy-smelling. I feel like I’m chewing cud. In a barn. In Kentucky. But it’s supposed to be good for you. Helps with dewy skin or better eyesight or memory or something. I’m old and fat. I need all the help I can get. Can’t hurt. Think I should cover my grey?”

Uh-oh, bad writing day, he can tell. “What grey?”

“I don’t believe you, but thanks, hon. What’d you and the boys talk about tonight?”

“That crabbing show. They filmed the last episode at the same bar we were at.”

“That Deadliest Crabs one?”

“No, I had those once, and it’s nothing you’d care to film.”

She laughs. “What else?”

“Just the game and stuff.”

She rolls her eyes. “You boys have no imagination.”

He bangs the front door open and stomps inside. Naked, his wife sits backwards on his favourite armchair, her breasts pressed to the chair back. Her legs are spread side, and the crack of her ass holds communion with the seat. Tattoos of naked women cover her back. “Oh, honey,” she looks at him over her shoulder. “Look what I got done today. I was out shopping for pumps, you know with the arch support like I need? Which reminds me, I need to take my glucosamine later. Anyway, I just felt like something a little more fun, y’know? Some good ole retail therapy. The grind’s really getting to me lately. I started with stilettos, and wound up with ink, and a nipple and a guiche piercing, too. I just figured, why not go the whole nine yards? Come see.” She swivels around and slouches low in the chair, hooking her legs up over the arms to give him a full display. “Slather some ointment on me, and then fuck me up the ass, hard as you can, OK? And tomorrow we’ll get you something fun, too. Maybe a cock ring. Although,” she muses, “it might be tough to find one big enough for you. Maybe special order?”

“You don’t think so, huh?”

She snaps the book shut. “Try me.”

“What’ve you got on under that nightie?” Tonight it’s the daisy-print flannel. The nursing one she bought by mistake, with lots of convenient buttons that she starts to undo.

“Guess, Mr. Cocky Brainstorm.”

“Nothing.”

“Bingo.”

“My favourite.”

“What’d you boys really talk about? Were they at it again? All with anal sex on their mind but too afraid to ask about it? Like it makes them pansies or something?”

She still wants to talk. He’s in no hurry. It’s one of those things all those sex movies fail to mention: the small talk. He shifts closer towards her. He knows what this is, these superficial questions of hers. To someone else it might seem like idle chit-chat, meaningless dithering going nowhere. But he recognizes it for what it is: foreplay. Getting reacquainted again after the daily separations of a humdrum life. A casual reconnection before the more intimate one that he knows is around the next bend. Step on the gas and try to cut a corner and it’s all over before it started. She’ll cut the engine.

“They think I’m having a threesome.”

She looks around the room. “There’s always the cat.”

“That’s not the pussy I had in mind.”

“No?”

His hand creeps up under her nightie, finds her inner thigh, and he lets it rest there, just shy of his ultimate target. Her hand simultaneously finds his fly, and she starts undoing the buttons with one hand. All that typing has at least helped keep her fingers strong.

“I was thinking,” he says, his hands just brushing the tips of her pubic hair. “Maybe I’ll write a story.”

“Oh, sure, everyone thinks it’s easy. But try coming up with new ideas all the time.”

“Yeah,” he says, his finger finding the bull’s-eye, “that must be tough.”